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Reid’s last seven hours had been a nightmarish blur. He’d woken to Dom shaking him, and reflexively readied himself for some desperate kind of struggle.

Only to realise that they were at Guy’s A & E.

Dom had half carried him out of the car to the entrance, where a nurse had told him it shouldn’t be long as it wasn’t that busy.

‘Not that busy’ turned out to be a packed waiting room and snippets of conversation overheard about people having been there hours. The state of a health service chronically underfunded for over a decade , Reid had thought, at a moment when he’d managed to gather his thoughts together.

During another of those moments he’d looked sideways at Dom and realised that he’d been imagining phantoms back in the car. Dom had brought him here to save his life.

Just because he did the wrong thing once doesn’t make him a bad person , he thought, and as he looked the other way he briefly imagined he saw Anna there, giving him a crooked, approving grin.

It had been impossible not to slip into sleep once he was settled in the high-backed chair Dom had managed to requisition for him.

And then to be repeatedly brought out of it by his colleague’s voice.

Sometimes he’d thought he heard Dom talking to someone else, but then he realised that the other voice was a wizard’s, and then a dragon’s, and he thought that probably wasn’t quite happening.

He knew he’d definitely told Dom to go and get on with the case at some point, only to realise that it was no longer Dom sitting next to him but Seaton Laws.

‘I’ve got this under control now,’ Seaton had told him. ‘The reg will be seeing you soon.’

Aside from wondering how Seaton had ended up there, Reid had felt a strange sense of peace at the man’s presence. It felt as though Seaton was a father figure, despite all the messy history between Reid and Anna.

At some unidentifiable time, Reid had at long last been summoned to a cubicle, where he’d been so out of it that he’d been convinced for a while that the registrar worked for the accounts department.

He wasn’t quite sure why. But Seaton had been able to explain drily that this was a doctor and that Reid needed to answer his questions.

Reid had done his best to answer, though most of the questions had seemed to be about the Eurovision song contest, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, and which he’d told him seemed a bit silly.

The registrar had next taken a good, blinding look at his pupils with a light and then suggested that it might be worth him having a CT scan, though he was fairly confident that there was no haematoma.

‘You’re probably all right, but I’m just a little concerned by your confusion,’ he told Reid.

‘What confusion?’ Reid asked him.

‘You said he was given tramadol?’ the doctor asked Seaton.

‘His colleague gave him some, but he vomited it up about ten minutes later,’ Seaton replied. ‘And he’s been worse since.’

‘All right,’ the registrar said. And then seemed to suggest that Reid should go on the red-eye.

‘Can’t fly anywhere,’ Reid mumbled. ‘My girlfriend… ex-girlfriend… she’s missing.’

‘No flying. It’s a CT scan, Reid,’ Seaton said with a sigh. ‘You’re having your head scanned.’

The CT turned out to be an exceptionally large cylinder, which he was slid into.

He was a little confused as to whether he was being launched into space or was going to hibernate, but somewhere in there he found himself in a room with Ryan Jaffett and Esther Thomas.

Esther was posing in front of a mirror, and Ryan was taking a video of it.

And then Esther suddenly saw Reid watching and looked horrified.

‘Shhhh, you can’t tell anyone,’ Esther whispered to him, her face pale and her voice urgent.

He half woke, full of a sense of urgency, only to find himself in that tube once again. The loud hum of it was intensely soporific, and in spite of himself he slid back into an all-consuming sleep.

He only woke again properly when a female nurse pulled up a set of metal bars on the bed next to him with a loud clang and he realised that he was now on a ward. The extreme confusion of the last few hours seemed to have receded.

His head and jaw now felt horrifically sore, and when the nurse asked, ‘Would you like any painkillers?’ he immediately said, ‘All of them, please.’

The nurse laughed and padded away on flat shoes. Reid moved his head fractionally and felt as though it was being squeezed by something massive and relentless. He closed his eyes, but as he did he realised that his dazed subconscious mind had solved something for him.

He knew what was on Ryan Jaffett’s phone.

He opened his eyes again and located his own phone, which was sitting on his folded-up jacket on a unit next to the bed. He sat upright just enough to reach it and felt like swearing at the throbbing pain in his head, but made it back to where he’d been without actually dying.

The phone was on 8 per cent battery, which wasn’t ideal. There were ten WhatsApp notifications from Dom Davies on it, and he opened them with a feeling of mixed fear and optimism.

What if he’s found her?

But the most recent message was an update to say that they’d only just found Kit Frankland, who was on his way to Finsbury Park now.

Previous messages were, when he read them, to say that there was no sign of either Anna or Kit at the Frankland house in Kew, which they’d forced entry to, and that their CCTV search at South Mimms had come up with nothing.

Another message sent Reid’s heart rate up a notch, even though he probably should have been expecting it.

Mate, we’ve had a reply this morning from Anna’s editor at the Ensign , and he said she wasn’t supposed to be on this Cambridge story any more.

He says they pulled it on Monday, before the ball, so there wouldn’t have been anyone to take an emergency call from her.

But we’ve got lots of other possible avenues, and we could well have found her by the time you’re awake.

Reid sighed. Of course Anna would keep going when she’d been told to stop. It was what she did. And of course it had got her into trouble. But not having the newspaper as backup didn’t mean everything was lost.

Reid messaged him back as succinctly as he could, telling him they should be looking on Ryan Jaffett’s spare phone for videos and images showing Esther Thomas with an older man.

And then he sat back, trying not to think about the fact that it had been thirty-five hours and that they might no longer be looking for a kidnap victim but for a body.

Seaton appeared in the gap between the curtains just after the nurse had visited again with three hefty tablets, and Reid gave him a small smile.

‘I think I might owe you one for last night. Was that… did you pull a few strings to get me seen quicker?’

‘I didn’t want you dying on me,’ Seaton replied, slightly acerbically. ‘It wouldn’t have helped at all with our efforts to find Anna.’

Reid couldn’t help smiling properly at that. ‘Well… thank you.’

‘You don’t have a bleed on the brain, anyway,’ Seaton told him, coming to sit on the plastic-covered padded chair next to him. ‘But you clearly did get a serious concussion. Did your attacker use a weapon?’

Reid tried to think back to the night before. ‘I don’t think so. I think he just hit me really hard, and then I hit my head on the wall, too.’

Seaton nodded. ‘Do you still think it was Kit Frankland?’

‘I… maybe.’ He frowned, and then regretted it. Anything that moved the muscles of his face and eyes was a mistake. ‘I might have freaked someone else out. It… I need to be there when they talk to Kit.’

Seaton gave him a long look, and then said, ‘I’ll get hold of the reg. You’ll need to be seen again before they discharge you.’

He returned to wait with Reid while the wheels were set in motion– Reid reflecting all over again what a different life it must be when you were Seaton Laws and always knew someone who could help you jump the queue.

They fell into an awkward silence in which neither of them seemed to know what to say next.

Reid tried for a little light conversation after a minute.

‘So… how have things been, since I saw you last? I didn’t… get the chance to ask.’

Seaton gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, they’re fine. Much as usual.’

Reid nodded, and then asked, ‘Garden going well?’

Seaton blinked at him. ‘Yes. Ahhh… it’s fine.’

‘How are the gladioli coming on?’

‘Yes, very well. Very well.’

‘The colour must be wonderful at this time of year,’ Reid added.

‘Indeed! Quite varied.’ There was another short silence, and then Seaton said, ‘Want a coffee or anything?’